Equality by lot

An article on Deutsche Welle assures us that all is well in the Land of the Free (Elections):

Why hacking the US elections is extremely difficult

The hacking into the Democratic Party’s server has sparked a debate about the security of the US voting system. But experts are less worried about hackers breaking into election systems than about a political issue.

As if a presidential race unlike any other in recent memory, featuring the two most unpopular candidates ever, needed any additional suspense, it was amply provided by the fear that the election outcome could be altered by hackers.

After all, goes the reasoning, if hackers can break into the Democratic Party National Committee’s (DNC) servers what’s to say they can’t do the same with the voting systems? That IT security experts and US authorities now suspect the Russian government to have had a hand in the DNC hack has not exactly alleviated those concerns.

But election systems experts argue that fears about a hacked election are disproportionate and often stem from a lack of knowledge about electoral procedures and systems.

Hacking into the private email server of the DNC or a company like Sony is completely different from hacking the election systems, said David Becker executive director of the Washington-based Center for Election Innovation and Research. Unlike those servers, where potential intruders face a single point of attack, US voting systems are not only highly decentralized, but none of them are networked or connected to the internet […]

Said Becker: “What voters in the United States need to know is that if they show up at the polls on November 8, their ballot will be counted correctly.”

None of this changes the point, brought up in two earlier posts, that it is easy to manipulate the electorate by hacking.

Filed under: Elections, Press |